Flashpoint (14 page)

    The layout looked exactly like the detailed plans I used to buy from Robert "The Schemer" Frenz when I was knocking over banks. "It's a hijack," I repeated. "The rectangle is a truck, and the square is the place it's going to be knocked off. The second page shows the different positions of four men during various stages of the operation, and the three-digit numbers are the times for the step-by-step plan outlined in the first-page paragraphs. See how the numbers go from zero-zero-zero to eight-three-zero? That means the whole job is supposed to take eight and a half minutes."

    "I went to the wrong school," Erikson said. He examined the two pages again. "But there's nothing here that indicates where the hijack is going to take place."

    "There must be further instructions in the envelope. Maybe McLaren-"

    "There aren't any more single sheets in the envelope," McLaren said from behind us. "But here's a stat of part of what's inside it." He showed us a weak black-and-white photostat. It was ghost-thin in appearance, but there was no mistaking that it was a photocopy of the cover of a New Jersey road map. I wondered how McLaren had obtained it without removing the multi-folded map from the envelope, but I didn't ask.

    "This job was planned by a pro," I told Erikson while McLaren read the two pages he'd removed from the envelope. "I can tell you right now that even if we opened the envelope, the map wouldn't tell us anything. Someone has an overlay that fits on this map, and without the overlay the map means nothing. Either the overlay comes later, or the man who's going to lead the operation already has it. If that was Hawk, you know what happened to him."

    "He wasn't carrying anything," McLaren said positively. "I checked him out thoroughly at the morgue."

    "Then it could be in the hands of Talia's boss who seems so willing to put up cash to recover the envelope. Let me see the plan again, Karl."

    He handed it to me, and I read it through completely.

    "Okay," I said. "It's simple enough. See these roads lettered A, B, C, D? The hijack will take place on Road A. Two minutes are allowed to jimmy the truck's rear doors; three minutes to find a small package called
Item
NUX, whatever that is, inside the truck; a minute to get to the get-away car, indicated by this small square; and two minutes to drive to Road D via Road B. Look at this note:
Avoid Road C.
It doesn't say so here, but I'll bet they intend to create a diversion at the actual scene, perhaps by setting the hijacked truck afire, and they expect the police and perhaps firefighting equipment to be arriving on Road C."

    There was a moment's silence.

    "Well, you said it was laid out by a pro," Erikson said thoughtfully.

    "I still think it's a dope shipment," I said.

    "And I think you're wrong," Erikson countered. "Everything the Treasury boys have ever told me indicates this would be the last way in the world to move dope. It seldom leaves the hands of the individual entrusted with it."

    "What was that you said awhile ago about returning the envelope?" I asked McLaren.

    "Since we've lost Hawk, the girl is our only link," Erikson answered for him. He gave me his smile-that-wasn't-quite-a-smile. "So all we have to do is send you back to the Turkish girl and have you follow through on her boss's offer to pay you to recover it."

    "Me? It's your baby, Karl."

    "The girl knows you," Erikson continued. "Who else could get close to her in a hurry?" He handed the stapled plan to McLaren. "Make photostats of these sheets, Jock, and then get the originals back into the envelope. Earl will sell it to the girl's boss, and then we'll know who the boss is."

    "Let me point out to you the holes in that Swiss cheese," I said. "How do I account for the fact that the envelope is unopened? Shouldn't whoever took it have been curious about what was inside?"

    "You'll think of something," Erikson said, unruffled.

    "The envelope can't be opened, because then they'd change the plan. And when you talk to the girl's boss, haggle. Start high on the price you want. That may give us some idea of how valuable this
Item NUX
is. But regardless, get to this character and get a look at him."

    "I told Talia that one reason I had to leave right away was to put out word that the envelope was worthless if opened," I said, thinking back over the sequence of events.

    "Then that will do it, since you also said you had to shake a tail en route here," Erikson said. "You can tell Talia's boss you had to put a 'hold' on anyone thinking of opening the envelope, and the tail will confirm your maneuvering."

    "I
think
there was a tail," I protested. "I don't know. You guys are taking a hell of a lot for granted."

    McLaren handed me the repacked envelope, still handling it via the tweezers. He was smiling as if he had heard Erikson's brand of persuasion before.

    Their attitude irritated me.

    If I couldn't get a shot at recovering Hazel's money, the rest of this jazz meant nothing to me.

    I decided I'd take an hour from my sleeping time to line up a speech giving Erikson the word that I'd abdicated.

    But I didn't get any sleep that night.

    

    

    I entered Chryssie's tenement with my mind still on Karl Erikson and Jock McLaren and their calm assumption that I would let myself be talked into doing their bidding.

    I found myself in front of Chryssie's door, key in hand, staring at the door standing ajar with its lock shattered.

    I think I knew what I was going to find inside.

    I drew my.38 before kicking the door wide open to make sure no one was hiding behind it. There was no sound except the dull thud of the door against the wall. The living room was empty. I made a quick tour of possible hiding places before I went into the bedroom.

    It was far worse than I expected.

    The bloody thing was spread-eagled to the four corners of the bed by gray clothesline-cord on wrists and ankles, the wide-staring blue eyes fixed on infinity.

    Chryssie was dead.

    Almost unrecognizably dead.

    I tried to tell myself that the pimp had come back and that this was his revenge for loss of face, but I knew better. A pimp doesn't carve up a girl with a knife until he's finished with her, not when he's trying to recruit her.

    No, it wasn't the pimp.

    It was me.

    Despite my precautions, I'd let someone tail me from Talia's apartment. When I'd eventually double-doored him in the subway, he'd come back, and with his knife, tried to find out from Chryssie where I'd gone. Or if I'd said anything significant to her about recovering the envelope.

    I could only stand there and hope that she'd been on a marijuana-high and hadn't known too much about what was being done to her. But looking at the mutilated girl-body, it was a forlorn hope.

    Sure, the girl had been a loser.

    She'd had no hold on life at all.

    She'd been a natural victim, her bizarre manner of living almost a guarantee of some such departure.

    But it had been me who had unwittingly stage-managed the gruesomely macabre finale. I'd involved myself with the girl because of her age. Involved myself in a half-hearted salvage attempt, yet I hadn't hesitated to use her for cover at the Alhambra.

    Now there was this savage finale.

    There was one small consolation.

    After his failure to obtain information from Chryssie, the knife artist would station himself outside to await my return. He might report his temporary failure or he might not, but he'd be waiting. He'd be outside now to pick up my tail again when I left the tenement. If I didn't come out, his curiosity-and his orders-would bring him back upstairs to find out why.

    So I waited for him.

    I employed the next twenty minutes wiping my prints from every possible object I might have touched in the flat. And I made one other preparation. I wrestled open the usually-closed window overlooking the alley below, the alley-window I'd noticed the first night I'd accompanied Chryssie home. Then I stationed myself in a corner of the room, keeping an ear cocked for sounds from the creaking stairway, the only access to the flat.

    When I finally heard the sounds, I was ready.

    The knife-artist sidled through the partly opened door at a fast glide, curved knife-blade in hand. He was small, furtive, and foreign-looking. "Inside," I said to him from the corner of the room where I was standing.

    He whirled, raised his arm to throw the knife, saw my.38 lined up on his head, and changed his mind. "Inside," I repeated, and motioned toward the bedroom in case he didn't speak English. He started toward it slowly, trying to watch me as I closed in behind him, gun at the ready. He didn't have a chance. I slammed the.38 against the base of his neck, and he pitched forward on his face.

    I dragged the unconscious figure into the bedroom and over to the opened window. I boosted him up and part way through it, turning him so that his upper body was outside the window and he was hanging by the hinges of his knees with only my weight on his legs to keep him from plunging down into the alley below.

    Then I waited.

    I wanted him conscious before I turned him loose.

    The rush of blood to his dangling head brought expected tremors as he regained consciousness. He started to struggle, then became rigid as his expanding awareness brought recognition of his situation. "Who sent you?" I said to him.

    Silence.

    I hadn't expected anything different. Even if he understood English, I hadn't expected anything different. There hadn't been an amateur connected with the operation yet. I watched the mouth of the alley until a wide-spaced set of headlights turned into its narrow passageway. A diesel snorted as the truck picked up speed.

    I gauged the distance, then pushed at the legs I'd been holding.

    Professional to the core, he went silently.

    I heard the sound as he hit, the quick blare of a horn, and then another sound.

    I closed the window and wiped my prints from it.

    I went to the telephone, looked up the number on the scrap of paper I'd left in the night-table drawer, and dialed. "Yes?" a sleepy, Main Line-accented voice said after an interval. "Who's calling at this hour of the night?"

    "Come and get your daughter, Mr. Rouse."

    There was an instant during which the only sound was the faint humming of the phone receiver in my ear.

    "She's-Cornelia is-" He couldn't complete it.

    "Yes, she is."

    I hung up the phone, wiped my prints from it, left the building, and headed uptown toward Talia's apartment.

    I felt a sudden urgency about meeting Talia's boss.

    He might not have wielded the knife, but he was the man responsible for Chryssie's death.

    I didn't look for a cab.

    I still had steam coming out my ears over what had happened to Chryssie, and I had to get myself in a sweeter frame of mind before I went up against Talia again to con her, so I walked.

    

    

    The night doorman in the East Sixty-third-Street apartment building eyed me dubiously when I told him I was calling on Miss Talia Rhazmet. He looked at his watch and again at me. Finally he directed me to the house phone but kept an eye on me while I placed the call. "It's me," I said when Talia's drowsy voice came on the line. "I've got good news for you."

    Her voice came alive. "You have? Wonderful! Where are you?"

    "Downstairs in the lobby."

    "Then come up right away."

    "Tell the doorman. He doesn't like my looks."

    I held out the phone toward the watching uniformed man. He walked toward it and took it from me, listened for no longer than it must have taken Talia to get out one sentence, then nodded to me. The self-service elevator whisked me to Talia's floor.

    Her apartment door was open, and she was standing in the corridor. She took my arm eagerly as I approached her, smiling widely. She looked bright and alert. I wondered if she was on the same high she'd been riding when I left her, or if she'd loaded up again while I was coming up in the elevator.

    I couldn't help but notice as she ushered me inside that she had on a long-sleeved nightgown and robe so sheer that the combined lacy material could have been pulled through a man's wedding ring. "You have the envelope?" she asked anxiously when she closed and locked the door.

    I took it out of my jacket pocket and showed it to her. She reached for it greedily, but I pulled it back. "You can look, baby, but you can't touch. Not until I get paid."

    "It is intact?"

    I turned it over and showed her the sealed back flap.

    "Wonderful!" she repeated with a toss of her dark hair that settled it loosely on her shoulders. "But how much do you expect to be paid?"

    "I'll negotiate that with your boss." I looked at the smooth, body curves within the semi-translucent material of her nightwear. "Although I remember you said you'd do anything yourself to get it back."

    She appeared to have forgotten that. She glanced at the clock buried in the flank of the polished brass elephant. "I must call Iskir at once," she said, moving to the telephone.

    "In English," I said.

    "In English," she agreed, and dialed. "Abdel? I must speak with Mr. Bayak."

    "Who's Mr. Bayak?" I asked.

    "Iskir Bayak, my employer. He is an importer of Oriental rugs."

    For a second I wondered if she were telling the truth. If the proposed hijack concerned only a shipment of Oriental rugs, then Erikson, McLaren, and I were barking up the wrong dogwood. Then I visualized Chryssie's nude, contorted, crimson-streaked body. No, Iskir Bayak was something more than a larcenous importer of Oriental rugs.